I was honored today to address the federal Medicaid Advisory Commission in Dallas and to present AAHSA's proposals for financing long-term care and transforming aging services. I was part of a panel with Bruce Yarwood of the American Health Care Association and Rich Browdie of AAHSA member Benjamin Rose in Cleveland.

My goal was to challenge the commissioners to think about overhauling long-term care on several levels, including creating a long-term care financing system that is broad, equitable and sustainable. I told them their goal must be more expansive than just squeezing money out of a broken welfare model and offered them our ideas for immediate fixes, longer term solutions and overall vision.

First, I shared AAHSA's Five Big Ideas for Transforming Aging Services: expand managed care, reinforce housing with services, enable technology applications, transform culture across the continuum of care and manage the transition of elders. As you know, we have been working with Congress and the administration to advance these ideas, which are based on existing models that work and can achieve results within three to five years. They are short-term solutions that can make a big difference for the people we serve.

Next, I shared with the commission AAHSA's newly developed long-term care financing concept. Developed by our Financing Cabinet and presented last month to our House of Delegates, this framework advocates for creation of a public insurance program for financing long-term care. It would be universal and accessible and financed by premiums, not tax dollars. Its benefits package could be as generous as our national will to contribute to it. And because consumers would be empowered with resources to make their own choices about what services they want and where they want them, the marketplace would surely respond with the innovation and personalization that is lacking in our current service delivery model.

In a nutshell, we believe our financing framework will create a sustainable system that promotes public and personal responsibility and consumer choice while ensuring a safety net for low-income disabled and elders.

Our current Medicaid system is not sustainable. If we don't fix it, states will be forced to choose between providing good education for our children or care for our elders. Families will also have terrible choices to make. If we want to ensure that whatever plan is created is consistent with our mission-driven, not-for-profit values, we must bring forward solutions and have the data to back them up.

At the last Medicaid Commission meeting, Florida Governor Jeb Bush asked if other countries had models we should consider. The AAHSA framework is similar to Germany's current system and is based on U.S. "cash and counseling" plans. The commissioners were intrigued by our approach and asked me several questions about how this could play out in our country.

The process of developing the AAHSA financing framework has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. Under the leadership of Keith Perry, CEO of Sears Methodist Retirement System, a team of state executives, members and AAHSA staff examined numerous models, met with countless thought leaders and crunched many numbers to devise an approach that will provide quality and help the people we serve. Barbara Manard, our vice president of long-term care health strategies, devoted countless hours to the research and writing of our framework, which we were pleased to share with the commission and will be circulating throughout Washington to educate policy makers and garner support from thought leaders.

I closed my presentation with a discussion of technology and its potential for transforming aging and cutting costs. Without a doubt, if we create a financing system that empowers consumers, the marketplace will create technology solutions to meet that demand. That's what people want.

To illustrate the possibilities we can create, I showed the vision video from our Center for Aging Services Technologies, "Imagine the Future of Aging." The response in the room was remarkable. The commissioners and audience were transfixed by how the technologies portrayed help improve our main character Ernesto's health and also help connect him to his family and community. I was asked several times what it would take to achieve the kind of technology-driven care system that the video portrays.

My goal today was to show what our country can do now to improve aging services, what we need to do in the future for care delivery and financing and what we can achieve with imagination and leadership. My hope is that the commissioners will leave the meeting knowing that our AAHSA community has both the vision and the plan for creating the future of aging services.

William L. Minnix, Jr., D.Min.
President and CEO

Read AAHSA's Five Big Ideas.
Read a summary of the Long-Term Care Financing concept.
Watch the "Imagine the Future of Aging" video.

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